My name is Bob DeMarco, I am an Alzheimer's Caregiver. My mother Dorothy lived with Alzheimer's Disease. We lived our lives one day at a time. IAAAC is a companion site of the Alzheimer's Reading Room.

Why Didn't I Get It?

The signs were there but no one could see them--not even me.

Why Didn't I Get It?

I was talking to my sister one evening and she said to me, “You better call Mom she says she hasn’t talked to you in months.” I laughed and said I talked to her two days ago and for more than an hour. Later in the evening, I decided to call my mother. After she recognized my voice she said, “Well its about time you called.” When I said I just talked to you two days ago she just shrugged it off and we began our usual conversation.I really don’t know why I wasn’t more concerned at the time but to be honest I wasn’t. And neither was anyone else. The typical comment, “she sounds good to me.” I guess like most people I just accepted the fact that she was getting old. Nobody saw a problem not even her friends who saw her on a daily basis.Looking back there were plenty of signs. For one thing, she was developing a very negative attitude. But, it seemed when I spent time with her, a few days, she would turn back into her normal self and start to have a more positive outlook on things. Another sign occurred when she began to scrape her feet as she walked. I suppose I should have concluded something but I didn’t. We thought she was finally slowing down. I could go on and on.Then Christmas came and I decided to take her shopping. To my surprise she could barely walk for five minutes without stopping. In fact, she was almost slumping over. Out of the clear blue sky, or so it seemed, she just couldn’t walk any distance and it was struggle just getting her back to the car. Clearly something was a-muck.I went to talk to her doctor. Other than her high blood pressure, her heart was fine and her overall blood work was pretty good—more than pretty good for a woman her age. Keep in mind we are talking about an 87 year old woman at the time, a woman who had never had a major illness or operation her entire life. The closest she had come to any of that was when she had an operation on a bunion on her foot.Yet now for some reason she was no longer able to walk comfortably. I began to notice how she was somewhat unsteady, how she began to reach out and hold on to things as she walked, and how she no longer had an interest in doing anything that required her to walk. Two years earlier this woman, my mother, walked more than a mile round trip with me in New York to eat breakfast.